Gavin Andresen: Ethereum Will Outgrow Bitcoin

What’s up with Ethereum? Is it really going to be the “Bitcoin Killer” as people labeled it in its early days, or just fizzle out?

At least Gavin Andresen, one of the leading personalities in the Bitcoin community seems to think so. He has made his opinion public in his latest tweet, which says:

“Ethereum has more nodes today than Bitcoin. Prediction: its lead will grow even as its blockchain size exceeds bitcoin’s.”

It is not clear whether his tweet was a result of all the frustration that has built up following repeated attempts to improve the Bitcoin protocol, or just plain facts. But it is something hard for a majority of the Bitcoin community to digest, especially with Core developers and the mining community dragging their feet for over a year without doing much about scalability issues.

Gavin’s tweet may as well be pointing out the things that should happened with Bitcoin protocol by now, but hasn’t. However, things are not as rosy with Ethereum as Gavin’s tweet makes us believe. The smart contracts platform has already been facing issues owing to its rapid expansion.

The Ethereum platform expanded too fast, with the constant addition of new features. But the rapid expansion has come at a cost, with compromised security and reliability. Even though it is not something that can’t be fixed, the platform has already experienced a series of attacks, undermining its security. One DAO attack resulting in theft that forced Ethereum to implement a hard fork. The two DOS attacks that took place last week further shown that Ethereum still needs a lot of work to turn Gavin’s words into a reality.

At the same time, some believe that by the time Ethereum makes it to the point where Bitcoin currently stands, it will be impossible to run full nodes on normal hardware. The processing power required for Ethereum mining is also expected to rise, increasing the need for more powerful systems.

Virtual currency is not legal tender, is not backed by the government, and accounts and value balances are not subject to consumer protections. The information does not constitute investment advice or an offer to invest.